because it makes the pain bearable
by psychicchameleon
Summary: "Why do you do it? Why choose the dark world of special victims when it never gets any easier?" "Because I'm too broken to live in a normal world." One-shot.


**Just an exploration into Barba's past. Let me know what you think!**

"Why do you do it?"

The words take her a bit by surprise. She's heard it before, of course, but always as an off-hand remark—never anything more than a rhetorical question. They'll ask the question, shake their head a little; maybe they'll give a pained smile. They don't actually want to hear her answer, because it doesn't matter anyway. They will never understand why she chooses to spend her life wrapped up in the dark world of sex crimes with victims that are usually left broken and perpetrators that tend to evade true justice.

The way _he_ says it, though, is different. He had invited her to his office to prep for the trial of a particularly hard-to-swallow case the next morning. Their victim was a seven-year-old girl that had been raped and sodomized for over three years by her own father. She had become pregnant, despite her young age. Upon finding out, her father drowned his daughter in a bathtub and stuffed her body into a garbage bag. The body was found by the garbage man when he came to pick up the trash.

It was a horrendous case.

"It never gets any easier. Why do you still do it, after all these years?" He really, truly, wants to know the motive. Why join the notoriously graphic special victims?

She thinks about giving him a bull-shit answer, like the kind she gives the people who ask her but don't care to really know.

"You tell me, Counselor. Why did you become an attorney?" Rafael Barba studies her face, reading her redirect as clear as day.

"I've always had this knack for arguing. But you already knew that, didn't you Lieutenant?"

She swirls the red liquid around in her glass and the corner of her mouth turns up. "It doesn't take a detective to figure that one out."

He flips the file on the coffee table closed, and pours himself a glass of scotch. There is nothing more he can do with the case tonight.

"That can't be the only reason you went into law," she probes. "Tell me more."

He raises an eyebrow at her before countering, "How about a plea bargain? I'll tell you why I became Manhattan's best-dressed ADA if you tell me why you joined SVU."

She mulled over the proposition in her head. "Alright, Counselor. You've got a deal."

Barba smirked, and then downed his whole drink. He contemplated his story while he poured another glass. There was the PG version that he had told his classmates and his friends. And then there was the real reason, the one he kept locked down for special people such as his Abuelita and his Mamì.

Oh, what the hell, he figured. Might as well get it all out in the open.

"My father was raised in Cuba. When he was twelve, my grandparents smuggled their way out of Havana and into a ratty neighborhood in the Bronx."

He didn't know quite why he was trusting her with the full version, but it was too late to stop now, so he pressed on.

"My dad didn't learn English until he met my mamì, but by the time she tried to teach him it was too late. He'd worked in a sweatshop his whole childhood with a bunch of other Cubans and all they ever spoke was Spanish."

"I guess I picked up on the language pretty easily, though, because I grew up with both. My abuelita would buy me books because she wanted me to go to college. I guess it pissed my old man off that I could read and speak in English, while he was stuck with no degree." Barba laughed, but his eyes were dark, "It probably didn't help that I've always been a bit of a smart ass."

"My papì started making it a habit of hitting me anytime he caught me trying to fit in with the Gringos. I didn't stop—I made sure to read right in front of his face just to make him angry.

Olivia winced a little at his admission of being abused as a child, but he shrugged it off.

"I could handle taking a punch every now and then. I didn't let it faze me, until he started resorting to other measures."

At this point, Rafael pauses his story, and his demeanor shifts. He's been relatively calm, but now his hand starts to grip his scotch glass a little tighter.

"He didn't start hitting my mom until I got into college." Olivia looks up at the man sitting next to her to search his eyes. Her heart drops when she finds them red and watering.

"I tried to kick him out, but my mom needed his income to take care of my abuelita when she got sick. I told her I'd drop out of college and start working at some entry level job, but she told me she'd sooner go to hell than watch me throw away everything."

His voice is low, and he's beating himself up internally to reign in his emotions.

"She was so happy when I got a scholarship to Harvard Law. My dad celebrated by breaking my ribs, but I never let my mother know because I knew she'd make me go somewhere safe, and I couldn't risk leaving her for longer than I had to. He beat me nearly every day that summer before law school."

His knuckles are turning white, and he sets his glass down so he doesn't shatter it. For the first time since he started to talk, he meets Olivia's eyes, trying to gauge her opinion of him now that he's shared his life story.

"The bastard died seventeen years ago. By then I was making enough to support my abuelita, and my mamì had long since kicked him out." He looked a little relieved to finish his story, as if remembering that his father couldn't touch his family anymore.

"That's why I prosecute for SVU, Liv. I'll never forgive myself for allowing my mother to live with him for that long, but I guess I thought that by doing this," he gestured around, "…by getting justice for these victims, maybe it'd make the pain a little more bearable."

He waits, praying she doesn't give him her victim speech or tiptoe around him like he's broken.

She takes a sharp breath. Well, if tonight was the night for horrible childhood memories then she guessed she was in.

"My father was a rapist." Her brown eyes meet his as she bites her bottom lip.

"My mother did her best, but she always resented me. Sometimes I resented her too." She feels the sob in her throat, but she refuses to cry.

"They never found the man who raped her while she was alive, and it killed her a little bit. She just wanted closure." He was startled by her candor, but she kept going.

"That'sc why I do it, even after all these years—because someone has to, right?"

The question hangs there in the silence.

"It's too late for me and my mother, but those other women and children out there, it's not too late for them." The words come out of Olivia's mouth, but they're the same ones in Barba's head.

Her head falls onto his shoulder, and his arm snakes around her waist. A mutual understanding washes over the both of them as the two wildly independent souls realize how similar they are—they've been broken in the same places.

"Liv?" he whispers.

"Yea?"

"Thank you." She doesn't ask what he's grateful for, because there are a million things he's thankful for in Olivia Benson, and she feels the same for him.

It's been a long night, and she's not quite ready for it to be over yet.

"Can we drink away our sorrows, just for tonight? Lucy is staying over, and I promise I don't have a habit of getting shit-faced," she begins to try to convince him that she really isn't a drunk, and that tonight would be the exception, not the rule, but he's already started pouring.

An hour later, and they're finally starting to forget.

"Barba, how do you drink this stuff? It tastes like dirt."

Rafael chuckles, "That's the peat, Liv. It gives scotch it's wondrous flavor."

She purses her lips. "I think I'll be sticking to wine."

The alcohol has her face flushed with a crimson blush. His shirt has long since been untucked, his tie discarded, and his sleeves rolled up.

Her body has grown increasingly comfortable next to his on the little couch in his office. They've talked about everything they could possibly think of.

Were Rollins and Carisi involved? Did Barba ever sleep with Rita Calhoun? Were the rumors about Olivia and her former partner true? Did Olivia really drive Rafael crazy?

"Oh absolutely. You make me lose my mind," Barba answers.

"Huh. Well you're not exactly keeping me sane either, counselor."

"I never said it was a bad thing."

The alcohol was losing its affect; Olivia felt herself start to sober up. It was nearing four a.m.

"I'm glad you told me," Olivia manages, referring to their original conversation for the first time in hours.

"For some reason, you seemed like the perfect person to trust with the details of my childhood. And, it's nice to know that you trust me with yours, too."

He pulls her waist just a bit tighter; she leans into his shoulder just a bit farther.

"Did you mean it when you said you wanted to be squabbling with me in 85 years?"

He smiles that butterfly-inducing smile. "Of course I did."

"Good," she smiles back, "because something tells me we're never getting out of SVU. I think we're too messed up to function in the real world."

"I'm fully prepared to die in this office, Lieutenant, as long as you'll be driving me crazy up until my last breath."

They looked at each other, the playful banter hovering just in front of the brokenness in their eyes.

"Nothing would make me happier." They stayed like that until the shrill ring of her phone cut through the office, and the pull of their jobs beckoned once again. This time, however, the pain didn't cut so deep, because for the first time, they weren't on their own.

End.


End file.
